Devil on the Back Roads

Got lost in Oklahoma looking for the highway,
should never drive off to make love early,

one whose frightful eyes were red-rimmed deep set
ringed with ashen circles sauntered over
to the car, looked in to see the red-haired woman
in the passenger seat, I didn’t wait
to say Good day, but let flood the morning sun
so he could not see the bare legs of my lover

Grandma would say she went to the back porch
when the devil knocked on her locked screen door

on a moonless night with no clouds in Arkansas,
told him to go before hell was covered over,
and he walked off, muttering, she declared,
for came a time she remembered her dead mother
chanting her strange charms and up rose the dead
to stomp and sing prayers that were warnings

and I thought of her in her grave and said to him
I’d find the highway by myself, Bye bye, go home

That’s the last time a good old boy from hell
turned up when I lost my way and found the devil

and may it be the last time the dead make me weep
they are so cherished where they lie down very deep

As for my long-legg’d red haired lover with red
hair all over, love lost its way, derelict, and died

(25 September 2012)

copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander